What happend on this day?

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#41

This is “Kennkarte”. ID issued by Germans to all adult Poles in occupied Poland.
As you see it belonged to my uncle Leszek Stanczyk, “Lech”.
On the third page of second page are two addresses:

  1. Boduena 3
  2. Chmielna 57

Our new member Gregory can confirm this locations.

In thread about Warsaw Uprising
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3500

I published few photos from WU Museum.
Last two shows barricade on Chmielna Street which my mother helped to build
in the first evening of Warsaw Uprising.
Kennkarte is sort of a proof for it.

On this photograph you can see my mum in 1943 in Warsaw. On the left is her brother “Lech”. On the right his commander from the Home Army. He died fighting in Starowka - Old Town. Unfortunately I don’t know his name or nick.
Mum did not wanted to talk about him. And now is too late to ask. She passed away in the year 2000.

#42

This is my father, lance corporal Kazimierz Krasulak, 8 British Army, 2-nd Polish Corps, Carpathian Lancers Regiment.
Photo from Italy 1944.


My fathers certificate of Monte Cassino Cross.


This photo from Northern Africa. Oasis on Iraqi Desert. 90 miles from Baghdad.
My father is first from from the right.

And the last one - Staghounds AFVs from Polish Carpathian Lancers Regiment on the streets of Bologna, Italy May 1945.

Sorry for bad quality and OFF TOPIC. Now you know what my nick mean…

Cheers,

Lancer44

#43

Excellent Lancer Krasulak :slight_smile:
And where is your father did finish the war?

#44

For my father war finished in spring 1947 when he decided to go back to Poland and was demobilized.
Counting from spring 1939 he was in the army nearly 8 years. (He’s nearly 2 years in soviet jail in Odessa - 5 month and and the next 17 month near Ussa and Ussusa rivers in Siberia, were counted as military service.
Practically he was POW.
But for soviet NKWD he was spy and counter revolutionary…
I think they did not shoot him just because 19 years old guy could cut a lot of trees before death from hunger and cold.
Indeed he survived. He was 175cm tall. Weighed in Pahlevi - Iran, where Poles were evacuated, he scored 48 kilograms.
He was too skiny to join the army and they send him, (and many others), to Nataniya. It was a convalescent camp buillt by British Army on the Mediteraenan shore where he was doing nothing for 3 month. Just eat, sleep, little bit in a gym, walk…
Than he was able to join the army for real.
But many guys died already in Iran.
They could not restrain themselves and ate a lot of food. Their gastrointestinal system, which was adjusted to water, (Soup) and 400 grams of bread, could not cope and they were sentenced to death…
Later British medics isolated evacuees from food stores.

With the first evacuation, British quartermasters were told that thousands of hungry people will come. They put massive supplies just right next to the Pahlevi port. In good will they killed many people…

Cheers,

Lancer44

#45

Why he was demobilized in 1947 mate? The war ended in 1945. What did you father till 1947 ? And why he decided to go back in communist Poland?
Could he took your mother away and stayed in the West?

#46

Well, he did not know her… They met, as I know, in 1950.

Right in 1945, after the war ended, 2-nd Polish Corps was expanding.
My father’s Carpathian Lancers Regiment having Staghound Armoured cars received variety of Shermans from Fireflys to earliest versions from storage.

The 2-nd Warsaw Armoured Division was formed and trained during 1945 and 1946.
They clearly were preparing to attack Soviet Union. No one of soldiers, veterans, had any appetite for such adventure…
General Anders played politics between London, communist embassy, parts of political parties which agreed to participate in government in Poland.

I believe that something would happen, but Labour British government cut it off. One day, late 1946, to each Polish armoured unit British MPs arrived with sappers equipped with oxy-acetylene cutters. It took them a few minutes to cut barrels of Fireflys, Shermans and any other armoured vehicles.
Dreams of general Anders, about going through Austria to Poland and about starting IIIWW disappeared…

Soldiers of 2-nd Polish Corps were transferred to UK, mainly Scotland, late 1946. Disarmed, they become members of PKP&R. Sort of paramilitary organisation which should prepare them for civilian life. Apart from handfull of real specialists, pilots and engineers, the only option was migration to Canada, South Africa or Australia. My father decided to come back to Poland.

(I believe he regretted his decision…) His younger brother in Poland was in 1946 a captain, company commander of KBW, (Internal Security Corps), he retired in 1976 as colonel in counterintelligence.
In 1948 my father was arrested and spent 1 year in infamous Cracow Montelupich jail.
He was very angry that his influenced communist brother did not helped him.
In reality I talked to him, (my uncle anyway), and he said that without his help my dad would be shot.
For me it seems right… He basically saved my father. Anyway, they cut off all contacts and met only on extended family events like weddings and funerals.
I now have contact with my cousin, SB colonel’s son. To my astonishment, last year, he told me that during Martial law in Poland, opposition printing of leaflets and illegal papers was run from ex-colonel’s apartment in Warsaw.
And my uncle, guarded it with his service pistol. Her was very timid and very much interested in modelling…

Crazy XX century…

#47

I think, yeah, I do think today is the day Hitler commited suicide. And soon the rest of Berlin will collapse. Think of it, in 1940, Hitler had taken control much of Europe, and now he was in a small hole under the earth by 1945.

#48

The calendar appears at the bottom of the main page with a ww2 related event each day!

#49

i was looking at the calendar and it says that on may 28th jews in paris were forced to sew yellow stars on their coats but the history channel cites this as occuring on may 29th??